This Can’t Be Right? – The Racism of Energy Cutoffs

The Georgia energy system on which the City of Decatur depends is broken.

The Public Services Commission and Georgia Power (GP) will tell you they are doing a good job of keeping the power on. They tell us that the $27 Billion spent so far on the new nuclear at plants is a good investment, when it still looks like a bad bluff in a poker game using our money. Or that they can safely contain 100’s of millions of tons of toxic coal ash from leaking into our water supplies. Or that they are investing in renewable energy, albeit at a snail’s pace. For all of these, they are richly rewarding their executives.

But in a period of COVID pandemics and rapid climate change, they are a huge slow moving centralized and monolithic industry from the last century.

In June of this year, the moratorium on energy cutoffs was lifted and Georgia Power moved forward with issuing 170,000 disconnects to its customers or 8% of its base! (Reported by the Center for Biological Diversity.) To their credit, GP has programs for the support of low income and at risk ratepayers. But many of these disconnects affect black, indigenous and people of color, especially in the middle of a pandemic.

Audrey Henderson’s must read article (https://energynews.us/2021/11/08/power-shutoffs-deepened-pandemic-toll-while-utilities-collected-millions-in-relief/) in the Energy News Network reports that “A nationwide ban on utility disconnections could have reduced COVID-related deaths by nearly 15% in 2020, an analysis found. Utility companies (across the country) lobbied against such ratepayer protections; meanwhile, some paid out billions in CEO compensation and shareholder dividends.”

Atlanta has one of the highest energy burdens in the country. Energy burden is the percent of income that residents pay for energy. According to the American Council for an Energy Efficient Economy, puts median Atlanta energy burden at 3.5% and the median low income energy burden at 9.7%. Anything over 6% is considered a hardship.

In April of 2020, Tom Fanning the CEO of Southern Company (Georgia Power’s parent) almost doubled his compensation to $28 million. He doesn’t have an energy burden. But thinking about his $12M dollar raise, maybe he could have paid off a few of those overdue energy bills.

The rationale for this process of cutoffs and control is subtle, and often a dog whistle. It requires a rationalization, but it is a form of racism hiding behind the narrative that people who can’t pay their utility bills are bad or lazy, or don’t want to work even considering many lost jobs due to the pandemic.

What can residents of Decatur do about this situation? Lots. For a start we can begin moving to a more distributed, less centralized, clean renewable energy system. We can create our own energy efficiency programs, especially for those with low income. We can create policies that help local residents with energy jobs. And a dozen other things. But to start with, we need to believe we can do better for our community and break free of the shackles of the current energy system and the thinking of the last century. Regardless of the color of our skin, where we live, or where we come from, we all deserve to live in an equitable society that can provide clean low cost power to all. Join All In for Decatur 100 and take action. Thanks.